


they’ll talk about us, all the lovers / how we kiss and kill each other

by straddling_the_atmosphere



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Eye Trauma, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, post-160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22334881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/pseuds/straddling_the_atmosphere
Summary: For the first few days after the sky breaks open, and the eye blinks at them from the gaping wound that used to be sunshine, they stay in the cabin. Jon is in no state to move, really, his eyes still occasionally leaking blood, dripping down his cheeks like a gross parody of tears.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 22
Kudos: 153





	they’ll talk about us, all the lovers / how we kiss and kill each other

**Author's Note:**

> um. have some good old catholic imagery and a healthy dose of eye horror.

For the first few days after the sky breaks open, and the eye blinks at them from the gaping wound that used to be sunshine, they stay in the cabin. Jon is in no state to move, really, his eyes still occasionally leaking blood, dripping down his cheeks like a gross parody of tears.

Martin is reminded of a Virgin Mary statue he’d seen once with his mother, that was reported to have cried the blood of the Eucharist. He’d seen her sad, still stone face, studied the red stains below her eyes, and wondered about the kind of people who called it a miracle. 

Is Jon her or is he the messiah, ready to die for their sins? Their fears? Martin remembers Peter, offhandedly, calling Jon a grubby Jesus, when he’d brought back Daisy alive from the coffin. Done the thing that nobody should have been able to do, and he’d done it twice, diving into the Lonely to get Martin back. 

And now Jon sits catatonic, eyes fixated on nothing in particularly because it’s not anything inside the cabin he’s seeing. It’s everything else. He sits and blood trails down his cheeks from his eyes, leaving gory trails along his skin. Martin gave up on wiping them away, instead focusing on packing their bags while Jon sits there, occasionally shifting and seeming marginally aware of Martin in a distant way, a way that reminds Martin depressingly like Elias or Jonah or whatever the fuck his name is. As if Martin doesn’t matter, in the long run.

By the third day, Martin sits in front of Jon, and cups his face. Blood has crusted on Jon’s shirt, red and flaky, and along the slender curve of his neck. He wipes the new tears starting to build in the corner of Jon’s eyes.

“Jon,” he says softly, and Jon doesn’t move. Martin tightens his grip on his face.

“ _Jon_ ,” he says again, sharp and syllabic, and Jon doesn’t so much as blink but Martin can suddenly feel an overwhelming pressure, like the focus of a thousand hovering eyes that he can’t see are all suddenly on him. 

Martin takes a deep breath, wonders if Joseph picked up Mary’s crumpled, distraught body from under the crucifix and wiped her tears, kissed her forehead, and he leans forward, pressing his lips to Jon’s slack, unfeeling ones. _Come back to me,_ he thinks fiercely.

For a moment, there’s nothing. Then, as if suddenly remembering that he inhabits a body, Jon takes a great shuddering breath, his hands hovering then curling in Martin’s shirt, and he kisses back, tasting like copper and crimson.

“Martin,” he whispers when Martin finally pulls away, and Jon’s eyes are clear for the first time, still glowing faintly, unsettlingly, but clear and lucid, and Martin could cry. 

Instead, he swallows it down, wipes the last of the blood off of his face, and says, “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Jon is pliant in Daisy’s cold, utilitarian bathroom, but somehow the water still works, and he lets Martin help him out of his stiff, crusted shirt, lets Martin wipe the streaks of blood along his face and neck, and as Martin presses his thumb to Jon’s slow, steady pulse, he thinks of Mary again. Of her cleaning her son’s body, wiping the wounds formed by the crown of thorns, by the nails in in his feet and hands.

He thinks of her as he helps Jon wash his hair, as he listens to his soft, even breathing. As he talks to him, nonsense words, soft, crooning things so that Jon doesn’t lose focus again. He thinks of her as Jon presses into his touch, the warmth of his body startling against the cold of Martin’s, a fog he hadn’t noticed circling around him completely disappearing when Jon seeks him out for another kiss.

He thinks of her again, when Jon takes his hand and grabs his pack. 

Jon’s eyes are free of blood for the first time in three days, and clear and _alive,_ and Martin thinks of the stone statue, weeping blood, and knows it’s a lie. Because if they were to be believed, her son came _back._ So why would she be crying still? 

And why should Martin worry, then, if Jon can come back to him? If Jon can hear his voice, feel his touch, and even with the weight of the broken crown Jonah put on his head, the blood that still occasionally drips from his eyes, he can grasp Martin’s hand and say, “I’m here. You’ll never be alone again,” then why should Martin be afraid?

“I loved you,” Martin said in the Lonely, and Jon still found him.

“I love you,” Martin had said into his skin, a week into their stay in Scotland, Jon sleepy and gorgeous and clingy, all warm eyes and affectionate hands.

And Jon, who never said it back, never seemed to be able to, but would cling to Martin whenever he felt the Lonely trying to take him back. Who would drag Martin out of the house to pet the cows, who’d shyly press kisses to the corner of his mouth to chase the taste of chocolate from the brownie he’d eaten. Who said it in gestures and touches and soft gazes.

Jonah might have erected a crucifix, and he might have discarded his creation, but Martin is no still stone statue. Jon might cry tears of blood, might choke on the dirt of the Buried and shudder as he feels skin that is not his own begin to peel off, but he’ll bite his tongue bloody and raw before he lets Jonah speak through him again. And Jonah made Jon a creature of this world, but Martin has always solidly been himself, for better or worse, and in a changing world, and as Jon looks at him and only him, Martin knows that sometimes there doesn’t need to be a Messiah. 

Sometimes, there just needs to be a hand to hold in the dark. 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @ tomasortega for some more tma posting!


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